


go ahead, haunt me

by theredhoodie



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Tragedy, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24880804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredhoodie/pseuds/theredhoodie
Summary: Laura Moon has lived her whole life covering up the words tattooed on her finger: the first words her soulmate will ever say to her.And then she meets the man whose words they are and she decides that the universe has to just be fucking with her.
Relationships: Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney
Comments: 14
Kudos: 100





	go ahead, haunt me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lostinspiration](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostinspiration/gifts).



> So I started this a long time ago and just now had the urge to finish it. I've been having a lot of Madwife dreams lately so I guess I miss them a lot.
> 
> This follows canon with a wee twist and a tweak here or there.
> 
> I hope you like it!

Most people’s parents, and people in general, were happy when their soulmate tattoos appeared. They were kind of like freckles: they arrived a few years after you did, once the universe had fully settled on who your soulmate would be.

Laura was three and while the words were teeny tiny around her right index finger, her mom pulled out a magnifying glass and looked at it. And spent the rest of the next yelling with her father. She had no idea what the words meant yet, but they weren’t good. She was told to keep it covered at all times, like it was something to be ashamed of instead of proud of.

So she went through a lot of thickly banded rings. The words grew with her until they could be read by the naked eye. It wasn’t until she was twelve and had access to her mom’s computer while home alone--well her babysitter was making out with her girlfriend on the couch--and googled the word she didn’t know.

It basically scarred her for life because the internet was unforgiving, especially when offering up photographs to google searches.

So she continued shoving a ring on her finger and whenever she got naked in front of a guy and he asked where her tattoo was because surely everyone had one, she’d pretend to be mysterious. They never found it.

Shadow’s first words were not it. She didn’t know how on God’s green Earth she could fall for someone whose first words were _that_ but it didn’t stop her. She grew up cynical at the universe and she didn’t believe in soulmates by the time she was fifteen no matter what the tattoos meant.

She liked Shadow, and he liked her and he made her life exciting so she kept him. She never took off her ring, except to shower, and only when she showered alone. He asked about it, and she told him it was private and to fuck off and he didn’t try to pry it from her finger or anything. Instead, he accepted her and married her and put his own ring on her finger. Small and silver. She liked it as opposed to the thick band she was forced to wear on her right hand. But it was as much a part of her now as her nose or her eye color: unchangeable.

When she died, the ring was on her finger in the casket. The funeral director had spoken to her mother and she insisted. It was there when she crawled out of her grave and vomited up embalming fluid for days.

She lost it in the fight, and she hid her hand, dangling from her socket with sewing thread, between her thighs in Audrey’s car as a dog turned into a man and she was swept up into the world of gods.

The tall one with glasses gave her the ring back after he’d reattached her arm. She’d stared at the words, hating them, angry that she died without ever meeting the person attached to them, hating them for being as they were and not “You mind?”. Because she wanted it to be Shadow.

She kept it in her pocket when she went to the motel. She put it on when she got into that fancy dress, because Shadow had never known her without it. She took it off after he left, her heart beating beneath her chest. She wondered if she could get away with pulling off her own finger and living the rest of her life without it when the door of the motel was kicked in.

She was dead and didn’t startle, so she finished tugging down her shirt calmly and turned as the stranger spoke:

“Give me my coin, you cunt.”

oOo

Sweeney did not, in fact, have a soulmate tattoo. He was immortal, and while he was barely hanging onto his immortal status, he wasn’t human. He’d seen many a tattoo on the skin of many women he’d fucked, none of which matched his first words to them.

So when he woke up, twenty-seven years ago and had a tiny “No” tattooed under his right nipple, he didn’t think anything of it. It may have been a drunken mistake and if it was, it would disappear in a few years anyway.

It did not.

It stayed there stubbornly, but he got wasted enough after his runs for Grimnir to wonder if, perhaps, this had something to do with his soul. Did he even have a soul? Shit was too metaphorical for his liking.

And then shit got bad for Grimnir and, when shit got bad for Grimnir, shit got bad for Sweeney. Twenty years was a blink in the eyes of gods and self-proclaimed leprechauns. Grimnir started giving him shit jobs and having clandestine fucken meetings under moonlight in cities that made Sweeney’s skin crawl.

“Kill her,” Grimnir said one day, knocking his foot against Sweeney’s chair. Sweeney, nursing a cold beer against a pounding temple, grunted and blinked blearily at the grainy surveillance photo on the bartop.

Young woman, brown hair, skinny as a twig. “Who’s she?” he asked, words still slurred from last night’s drinking.

“A complication,” Grimnir said, sitting on a leather barstool and putting his fedora on the counter. Ordered a whiskey. Nodded toward the photo expectantly.

“I’m not your fucken executioner,” Sweeney retorted, shoving the photo across the wood. Well, he tried. It stuck and his dirty fingertips slid right across the woman’s face.

Grimnir was silent until he got his whiskey on the rocks, the ice clinking in the glass. “You do this for me, Sweeney, this one final job, and I’ll cut you loose.”

Sweeney, worn thin, barely half the man he was three decades ago, was interested. Hungover as fuck, but interested. 

But it ended up being too messy. The guilt overshadowed his freedom and he wasn’t even fucken free after it all. He was left staring down at a girl dying on the side of the road and there was darkness and dishonor in it. 

He beat himself up about it for days. Drunk himself stupid, stupid enough to get his teeth blooded by Shadow fucken Moon and give him his fucken lucky coin. 

As life would have it, the universe was not done with Mad Sweeney and Laura Moon.

oOo

_Fuck_ , Laura thought. _Fucking shitballs to fucking Christ what the fuck!_

She wanted to kill herself. Again. 

This? _This_ was the universe’s great response to her soulmate? This towering giant, disrupting her quiet little motel room with his loud cursing and accusatory tone. This fucker was the one who made her feel so fucking ashamed about a part of herself that she covered it up for her entire life and now afterlife?

The universe could suck a big, fat wrinkled dick.

“No,” she said simply, her movements slow but her brain was still fast. She knew what he meant, the coin in her belly keeping her alive, and she wouldn’t give it up. She was a selfish bitch and she had just set it in her mind to save Shadow. She wouldn’t give that up for anything.

The tattoo usually hidden beneath the ring on her hand stung briefly, which was weird because she was dead and she didn’t feel anything. It was out there in the open, the ring tossed on the bed behind her.

“You’re the wife,” the man continued, walking into the room with all the swagger of an asshole who thought he was the best thing since sliced bread and all should worship at his feet. “The dead wife.”

Laura tilted her head to the side, quizzically, like a little bird. She was small, fragile boned, but she had a few tricks up her metaphorical sleeves and they did not involve asking him about soulmates or fate. Because who the fuck cared?

She tilted her head back and watched as he came closer. She didn’t say anything because she finally, _finally_ had someone to put her hate on and she was reeling with the thought. Twenty-four years worth of hate and shame and she was looking at the person who gave that to her.

 _Fuck him_.

“Give me my fucken coin, dead wife.”

He grabbed her quick, hand around her throat and naturally she opened her mouth, gasping for air she didn’t need. The coin glowed, powerful and fueled by her own emotions in that moment.

“Aye, that’s my fucken coin,” he said, squeezing.

 _Fuck. Him_.

Snapping her mouth shut, she lifted a hand and flicked his chest with her tattooed index finger. He sailed across the room, slamming against the wall and sliding down to the floor, wheezing. As he struggled against the wall, limbs uncooperating, she walked over and crouched down in between his splayed legs.

“You mean my fucking coin,” she said. She felt a lot calmer than she thought she would.

He went on and on, about his coin, and she hit his hand before he could reach for her again, breaking bones. She stepped on his other hand, refusing to give in. It was penance, she thought, for all those years of her life.

She let him sink her into that bath and thrash around as if that would make her give in. The satisfaction she felt to hear the cops arrive and him cursing her was enough to make her smile.

oOo

She kept coming back. He kept coming back. The dead wife, the twig of a woman who he’d killed, walking and talking and haunting him.

Some of it he took for penance. It’s why he’d let Shadow wreck his face at Jack’s, to pay for what he’d done. Grimnir gave him one last job and it fucken broke him.

And here she was, Dead Wife, walking around with his coin, eating up all his good luck so she could run after her fucken husband. She never shut the fuck up about it, except when they stopped for the cab driver fairy to pray on the side of the road.

She’d smoke and keep quiet and Sweeney wondered how the fuck this was gonna come and bite him in the ass. He wanted to fuck up Grimnir’s plans, but he didn’t want to get dead in the process.

It was a fucken nightmare.

And then, her bad driving got them thrown from a fucking ice cream truck and his coin was right the fuck there in the road, in his hand. He had it, he could feel his life turning, going back to the way it was, now without the strings of Grimnir holding him up like a fucken puppet.

But something--some fucken thing stopped him from walking along, pocketing his coin, never letting it out of his hoard ever again, drunk or not. He physically couldn’t walk away. He tried: he cursed, he swore and he punched the air like he could fight it.

He crouched above her, hands slimy from grabbing her organs from the road and shoving them into her abdomen all out of place. Her eyes milky white and staring, lifeless. He clenched his jaw, guilt from the last time he stood over her on a road coming to the surface.

Fuck this, fuck that, fuck Grimnir and his whole fucken plan.

Sweeney swallowed hard and gently placed the coin right there on her ribs, his fingers lingering, a sense of calm and acceptance washing over him.

She punched him.

 _There’s my girl_ , he thought, gasping for air, staring at the blue sky. _Fucken hell_.

And then they were off again to find her a new life. Because he couldn’t live with himself if she didn’t. And she wouldn’t live if they couldn’t.

oOo

Laura hated him so fucking much that she flaunted her ringless finger just to make sure she remembered she was supposed to loathe him.

It was hard, when he gave her pep talks about living after she lost Shadow that weren’t half bad and actually made her move her ass. It was hard, because he was still the only one trying to get her her life back. Shadow--her own fucking husband--seemed to want her to be gone, dead or otherwise.

It stung, even though she couldn’t feel very much.

So she took Wednesday’s offer to find herself a temporary cure, Sweeney’s words echoing in her mind the whole time. He was right, of course: it wasn’t what she wanted. When Wednesday left her, she had to make her way out of the room with that _thing_ \--that _god_ \--leaking and dead by her own hand.

She had breath and a slow heartbeat. It was the most alive she’d felt in a long time and as she moved and could feel herself warming at the exertion she had one person she wanted to tell, to share it with, and it wasn’t Shadow.

Laura hated the circumstances that her life had aligned with so much that she cried for a while and contemplated pulling off her stupid finger again but her flesh was more solid now so she couldn’t.

Once she’d gotten out the tears and let out a screaming line of slurs to the heavens, she got to her feet. She was done with gods, done with soulmates, done with _everything_.

She had a new focus: one taste of renewed life and she needed more. But for that, she needed Sweeney.

oOo

“In death is her true love, but she betrays him also.” Laura ran her tongue along her molars, trying not to feel. The universe had shifted beneath her feet ages ago, but every time she thought she’d found her footing, she was reminded of something that made her slip.

She didn’t look at Sweeney, ignoring the burning on her index finger. She had perfected that art in the last few weeks of her undead life. Ignoring, ignoring, _ignoring_. She slipped sometimes when she found that she couldn’t actually drudge up enough hatred to glare or snarl at Sweeney, but she blamed that on the fact that she was so much closer to that resurrection he’d promised.

She ignored it too when Samedi told her she would need blood infused with love to complete her potion. Love was...big. It was big and she was sure it didn’t exist any more, not after everything she’d seen and done and felt.

“I have to...I have to find that?” she stammered out, wriggling on the countertop. She didn’t want to think about _love_ because it made her wonder if soulmates were synonymous with love and she did _not_ love Sweeney. Obviously.

But maybe she did because there she was, getting fucked on the counter of some voodoo bar shop in New Orleans and suddenly it wasn’t Samedi, but Sweeney.

They didn’t stop.

He looked at her in a way that made her toes curl and her breath catch and she didn’t _want_ to stop.

That scared her more than Wednesday.

So when she woke up, alone and barely dressed, she was going to leave without a word. She had her potion now, she could bring herself back whenever she wanted.

But he was there, lingering, throwing his feelings at her with his stupid vulnerable eyes and she did the only thing she could think of: she hurt him, hating herself in the process because _she hurt him_ and because now she was truly alone.

“You do Wednesday’s errands because...no matter how much you claim you want a war to die in, you’re too much of a fucking coward to find your own.”

oOo

“Sweeney died last night.”

The words caught her off guard. She didn't know if she righted her face in time. Rolling onto her back, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She didn't need to, but it calmed her. Shadow’s words were muffled to her ears. 

Should she have known? A part of her was certain she would have felt it. If not for the coin in her chest, then because of the words circling her finger. She felt small, the purpose she’d found fizzling. If the universe was gonna be fucked up enough to give her a soulmate she hated, wasn’t it just peachy that they killed him too.

Samedi had shown her her true desire and she’d freaked the fuck out. She didn't know if she was coming here in hopes of finding Sweeney. She had merely headed toward Shadow’s light and was making shit up as she went.

Eventually Shadow left her lying on the grave. She should be dead too, for all that she was worth. What had she done except die, lose her husband, lose her fucking soulmate. It all twisted around Wednesday and her hatred for the man, the god, shone in her mind like a sharp knife.

She couldn’t even look at him--his _body_. She had been calm, if not a little snippy, in the beautiful goddess’s presence, but she was frustrated and upset. Upending a table, mind whirling to catch up.

What could she do? She should have trusted him, believed him, rather than taking all his luck away and fucking everything up.

It took a long time for Laura to lift her gaze from the floor to the legs of the table, to his hand resting on the tile top. She almost bit through her lip from worrying it between her teeth as she forced herself to look at his face.

He looked the same as always: bruised, bloody, like he’d snort himself awake and fall off the table and then yell at her as if it were her fault.

Of course, the gaping hole in his chest told her that wouldn’t happen.

It took longer, maybe an hour, before she stepped up, pressing her fingers against his wrist, expecting to feel a pulse. Nothing, though his body wasn’t as cold as she expected. They were the same temperature now.

“Fuck,” she whispered, blinking back what would have been tears if her body wasn’t quickly deteriorating again, losing its ability to pretend to be normal and alive. 

The house was in an uproar and no one cared. Sweeney was simply laid out here, not even properly taken care of. Laura knew how it should have been.

She couldn’t stay here.

She couldn’t leave him.

She looked at her hand, the tiny words inked into her skin. No matter what she tried to get away, they always linked her back to him.

Soulmates were bullshit, even though she now believed in magic and gods and all the things a lifeless husk like herself had never given much faith in.

But if he was somehow _hers_ , she would be damned if she didn’t try to bring him back with the same aloof caring he tried with her.

She hefted him off the table, her strength still enough to carry the dead weight, and she stumbled a little on the stairs before making her way to the road.

With no plan in mind, she walked. If she walked long enough, she’d figure it out. Even if she had to walk all the way back to New Orleans, she would do it.

It wasn’t like she had a choice.


End file.
